Is Motorola's Moto G3 a great buy?

Motorola offers plenty of freebies as a part of its launch offer for the third generation Moto G, but struggles to impress when pitted against competitors like Xiaomi’s Mi4i

On Tuesday, Motorola had launched the third generation of its popular Moto G smart phone in India. The company unveiled two variants of the popular Moto G smart phone — an 8GB version with 1GB RAM for R11,999 and a 16GB version with 2GB RAM for Rs 12,999.

So, what’s new in the Moto G3? Plenty. Let’s see how. For starters, Motorola has added 4G LTE connectivity into the Moto G series, made it water resistant (IPX7) up to three feet (for 30 minutes) and is offering consumers a chance to customise their phones, thus getting an upper hand over its rivals in the price range. Motorola is also offering a host of freebies and other offers to attract consumers including a 100% cashback to 100 lucky customers, as well as a chance to buy the Moto 360 smart watch for just Re 1. There are also discounts and vouchers on Flipkart and Myntra, which will be available till August 2. It’s enticing and it will be interesting to see how it affects sales.

Meanwhile, the 720p HD screen of the Moto G3 fails to impress when compared to the 1080p Full HD screen of the Mi4i from Xiaomi (priced same) or the slightly expensive Asus Zenfone 2 Ze551ML version.

Also, the price difference of Rs 1,000 between the 8GB version with 1GB RAM and 16GB model with 2GB RAM doesn’t serve any purpose for those looking for a slightly inexpensive option. As consumers wouldn’t mind shelling out an extra grand if it get them twice the RAM and storage capacity. We also do not like that the Moto G 3 retains the same front face featuring the old lines on the top and bottom, and lastly the battery is still weak at 2470 mAh.

But despite these setbacks, it’s good to see some changes in the back panel, which gives Moto G3 a new look. The Moto G3 also runs an upgraded Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor with a 1.4 GHz quad-core CPU and features 5MP front camera and 13MP rear camera. But we will be able to talk about the performance difference only once we receive the review units. Meanwhile, stay tuned.